9. Hard Candy: Ka-boom! No film this year was less expected, more rattling or more tense. Thirty-year-old Patrick Wilson tried to hook up with a 15-year-old Ellen Page, and both he and the audience got a lot more than expected. Taut, terrifying, sexually provocative and terrific.
10. The Fountain: Am I crazy! I only gave this a "B" when I reviewed it. Still, writer and director Darren Aronofsky's wildly romantic and occasionally silly exploration of mortality, love and natural limits was the year's most ambitious film, a time-traveling visual feast. It's flawed, and not for everyone by any means, but months after first seeing it, I still think about it all the time. Courageous and kooky, beautiful and blissfully mad.
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